This invention relates to tape recording and playback apparatus in which a magnetic tape is wound at opposite ends on a pair of motor driven reels for forward and rewind movement past recording and reproducing heads.
In commercial radio broadcasting, it is well established practice to pre-record a wide variety of programs, from short time announcements and commercials to entire hour long entertainment and educational packages. Some radio stations are 100 per cent automated, using pre-recorded material exclusively.
In preparing pre-recorded material for later transmission, or for editing raw transcriptions for broadcast, it is often necessary to locate certain recorded material, or to cut certain versions out to meet a time requirement. For this purpose it is desirable to scan or monitor the tape by listening to it at fast speed before listening to it at play speed.
Furthermore, to minimize head wear it is desirable to completely disengage the tape from the heads when the tape runs at fast speed in either forward or rewind directions without scanning or monitoring the tape.
In conventional tape handling equipment for broadcast purposes, many of these monitoring, playback, and scanning procedures have to be carried out manually with considerable time consumption and pressure on the operator or engineer, especially when the schedule calls for a series of short, tightly-cued cuts of news or special interest items which have to be prepared in a hurry.